IRIN
AFGHANISTAN: Record numbers enrol in new school year
21 March 2007


KABUL, 21 March 2007 (IRIN) - Schools in Afghanistan will open their 
doors to more than six million pupils at the start of the new academic 
year on 24 March - almost double the number of the past five years.

"This is a historical moment in Afghanistan," said David McLoughlin, a 
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) official in Kabul. "Afghans have 
reaffirmed their commitment towards an educated society."

In 2002, more than three million students enrolled in grades one to 12, 
according to Keiko Miwa, an education specialist with the World Bank.

Girls comprise about two million of all students who will join school 
from Saturday. In an effort to ensure equal access to education, 
Afghanistan's Ministry of Education plans to enrol 400,000 more female 
students in 2007.

During the Taliban rule between 1996 and 2001, girls were deprived of 
any formal education. Enrolment rates vary greatly between urban and 
rural areas, however. In the capital, Kabul, and western city of Herat, 
enrolment rates for girls can reach 50 percent, while in insurgency-hit 
Uruzgan and Zabul provinces in the south, more than 90 percent of girls 
cannot go to school.

More than three decades of conflict and conservative customs have 
restricted female education, with the result that about 80 percent of 
Afghan women are now illiterate, according to UN agencies.

The Afghan government has placed education at the top of its development 
agenda. It has allocated 4.3 percent of its national budget to education 
and has requested donors for an extra US$300 million development fund.

The country needs 7,800 additional schools over the next five years, the 
international agency Oxfam said in a report in late 2006.

UNICEF is supporting endeavours to fight widespread illiteracy among 
Afghans. "UNICEF will provide assistance to the Ministry of Education in 
rural girls' education, teachers' training, curriculum development, 
capacity building and women's literacy," McLoughlin said.

The UN agency spent $6 million on stationary kits, which will be 
distributed to students in grades one to six on their first day at 
school in 2007. About 100,000 teachers in Afghanistan's 34 provinces 
will receive similar assistance.

Other major donors, including the United States Agency for International 
Development (USAID) and European Union (EU), have printed millions of 
textbooks in addition to supporting an extensive teacher training 
programme.

Insurgency shuts schools in south

In 2006, hundreds of schools were shut in the south and southeast of 
Afghanistan where the Taliban resurgence threatened students and 
teachers.

At least 120 public schools were torched and 10 teachers killed in 2006, 
while 273 schools were set on fire in 2005.

In some provinces insurgents have circulated 'night-letters', 
threatening parents who send their children to school.

"We do not have soldiers to guard all schools and protect every 
student," said Zahur Afghan, a spokesman for the education ministry, 
"but we have tried to attract people's support for their children's 
education."

Hundreds of schools will remain closed in volatile provinces in the 
south and southeast, denying thousands of children the right to 
education, say officials and aid workers.


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